


anyway, disaster is inevitable

by rayguntomyhead



Series: babylon burning [1]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:15:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22972366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayguntomyhead/pseuds/rayguntomyhead
Summary: Hot Rod walks the rusted slats of the highline,creak creakof the metal under his pedes, wind above and around and rushing in the echoing drop below. The red sun flares harsh just above the horizon, slowly bleeding energon pink up into the fading pale of the night sky. Fragging pretty it what it is, like hopes and maybes and what ifs.Or Hot Rod's last morning in Nyon
Series: babylon burning [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1767436
Comments: 10
Kudos: 27





	anyway, disaster is inevitable

**Author's Note:**

> so this is one of those weird ficbits that doesn't belong to a story but suddenly shove its way out of your brain out of the blue and was written entirely on no sleep, Richard Siken poetry and Bravo Molina music.

Hot Rod walks the rusted slats of the highline, _creak creak_ of the metal under his pedes, wind above and around and rushing in the echoing drop below. The red sun flares harsh just above the horizon, slowly bleeding energon pink up into the fading pale of the night sky.

Fragging pretty it what it is, like hopes and maybes and what ifs.

Hot Rod’s watched it come up a million times, sprawled on rooftops in shivering piles with one half patched-up tarp between them, hanging off tram lines until it was almost too late to drop and your pedes cracked when you hit the concrete, but this way is still his favorite.

Up here, on this abandoned road stretching out from Nyon, he can hear the wind whistle dour melodies in counterpoint to the bang and clatter below, see the faint lights of Iacon winking off and their shining towers go dim. Only him and the frantic pulse of his spark, balancing on the edge of never at the whims of the wind and an indifferent god.

One, and one, and one, thin strips of metal marched out in front and Hot Rod sways his weight, forward on one pede, back to the other balanced on the slat behind. _One, two, threeandfour. one two threeandfour_ like the beat of that mournful song the buskers always play on their electric violins, and Hot Rod dances from beam to beam, arms fanned in delicate counterbalance.

 _If I cannot be a crystal bloom, I will turn myself to a gun_ sings in his head, _when the morning rises, turn myself into a gun,_ the rest of the tune trailing into wordless melancholy and why can’t he remember the words? He should remember the words.

A missing space gapes two steps ahead, and he spins a wobbly one pede pirouette, skipping over the gap. The whirl-scrape of his pede leaves a pale scuff on his plating, but he can’t hear the sound of it. Can’t hear anything over the hungry rattle-roar of Zeta’s death machines, marching, marching, nearly to the city’s edge, because no matter what Pax promises everything is eventual, no justice, just us, just Hot Rod and his city and his bombs.

The iron is cold beneath his pedes, cold like the detonator in his hand, a sharp slash of unforgiving angles. He stops, balances, rocking back and forth on the thin strip of metal track, stretching out the in-between time like molten glass, like he can stay here forever with death in his hands and death beneath him and death looming inexorable on the horizon.

The others are waiting for him, somewhere beyond the city borders. The ones that made it. All the ones that could stagger or roll their way out of their crumbling city, leaving all the ones _Skipjack Wheeler Flipwheel Downdrift_ that couldn’t.

 _Do you think we’ll make it out of here someday_ Downdrift would always ask, and Hot Rod would always grin around his mouthful of lies, his _sure we will, Drifters,_ and his _let ‘em try and stop us._ Downdrift always asked the same questions when Hot Rod tried to get him to recharge, but that’s okay, he's young, barely old enough to oil his own joints and anyway, the fun was in the pretending, right?

Beneath him a slat gives with an desolate _crack_ and for a ventless moment Hot Rod teeters, staring down at the petering skeletons of buildings below, a lasting monument to the blind optimism of mecha vorns ago, to expansion, and a city that thought it could never die.

But his balance holds and he steadies, plants his pedes. The death machines roar loader now, loud enough they overload his audio input with a sudden pop leaving only the quiet rush of his internal systems. They’re in the city now, more and more and more of them, spilling in like the stream of engex from an overturned bottle, turning the streets black with their bodies.

The sun balances over the horizon now, flares bright enough to light Hot Rod’s plating in bright, brilliant flames, smoothing over chips and dents and the fading edges of starved nanites. Morning is here, fully, finally, bright and terrible and there’s no more time, none. _This is where the morning splits, turns to love or death_ sings in his head, except this time it’s both, love and death in horrible union, an ineluctable _conjux_ _ritus_.

What a riot.

Hot Rod spins another wobbly one pede pirouette, arms punched up towards the heavens and he doesn’t fall, he never falls and time to make the choice, Roddy, _pull hard and make a wish._

**Author's Note:**

> kudos and comments are <3


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